Potato Salad and Burgers

A couple weeks ago, Chuck had a craving for potato salad, and I burgers. An excellent match. We turned to the most reliable of the Food Network chefs for recipes... Alton Brown's Burger of the Gods, which Tim made to rave reviews in the past, and Ina Garten's New Potato Salad. Delicious. Both were hits...

Potato salad can be tricky- it can go very, very wrong. Ina's recipe was very, very right, though. It had some tang from the buttermilk, good crunch from the celery and onion, a little class from the whole grain mustard and fresh dill.

Alton Brown's "Burger of the Gods"

Tim had his boys over to barbecue and watch the Final Four last night, and he went all out... no package of frozen Costco hamburgers for this fellow. He had seen Alton Brown make his "Burger of the Gods" on TV and decided this was his chance to give it a try.

Alton's recipe skips the pre-ground meat in favor of grinding your own chuck and sirloin in the food processor... an extra step, but it was totally worth it. These burgers were awesome. Try them. Sorry this photo doesn't do them justice... I took it about 5 beers in.

Greek turkey burgers!

Mmm... this is the second time I've made these turkey burgers, very loosely based on Rachael Ray's Spanikopita burgers. Here's what I did (approximately, since I was throwing stuff in without measuring both times I made the burgers):

Makes 4 fat burgers

1 lb ground turkey
olive oil for sauteeing
some onion, chopped (about 1/2 C)
2 cloves of garlic
half a bag of baby spinach (you could use frozen spinach, too, if that's what you have- drain it)
1 egg
some dried oregano (1 tsp)
salt and pepper
handful of breadcrumbs (about 1/3 C)
1/2 C feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup kalamata olives, finely chopped

- sautee the onions in olive oil until soft, add garlic after a few minutes
- throw in spinach, sautee until wilted, turn off heat
- put turkey in a large bowl
- throw everything else in with the turkey, mix with your hands
- form into 4 large burgers
- sautee the burgers in a teeny bit of olive oil (Rachael said 5 minutes per side, but mine took a lot longer for some reason)

Serve on toasted buns with a greek yogurt sauce. For my yogurt sauce, I combined the yogurt with salt and pepper, some fresh lemon juice, and dill and mint from the Aerogarden. I made homemade buns/rolls with the dough I had sitting in the fridge.